Pompeyo González has returned to his home in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos) after almost three months in pre-trial detention. His name may sound completely unfamiliar, even to his own neighbors. He is the unabomber who wanted to sow panic - to scare or create confusion - in the Government by sending a chain of threatening letters with explosive material. All the targets that this retiree pointed out in his missives had a common link: the support that his recipients showed for Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.
The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has released him after he was sent to provisional prison on January 27, when he was arrested by the National Police. His advanced age – 74 years –, that he had never before crossed the criminal line and his way of life have tipped the scales for the investigating judge to review his situation and allow him to return home.
The investigators continue not to reveal why he did it, what was the motivation that led him to prepare those letters with pyrotechnic material and a small explosive device for the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez; the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles; for the embassy of the United States in Spain - with which he caused an injury -; an armaments company from Zaragoza, and the European Union Satellite Centre, located at the Torrejón de Ardoz military base (Madrid). This last letter, the only one that was not detonated, was key to the investigation.
The judge affirms that the detainee's idea - after a laborious investigation by the General Commissioner of Information of the National Police - was to force the central government to stop the humanitarian and military aid that Spain has been providing to the Government of Kyiv since the beginning of the outbreak of war. But Pompeyo González, according to legal sources, has not opened his mouth since he was arrested: he has not given any explanation. So, at the moment it is unknown what went through his head.
No one knows what prompted him to wake up one day, start buying the materials and prepare a plan to send all these letters with explosive material, which can land him in prison for many years, after retirement and without a head previous criminal record. His ideas in favor of Vladimir Putin's regime, based on a thunderous idea of communism, will lead him to face six crimes of terrorism and another of using flammable or incendiary explosive devices for terrorist purposes. No one knows if he regrets what he did, if he was fully aware of it, or if he is truly sorry. What does seem clear is that his actions may lead him to be locked up for the rest of his life.
The researchers were able to determine in which environment it moved. A solitary man, he was sometimes associated with his neighbors in Miranda de Ebro; "an unsociable being", as research sources explain to La Vanguardia. How did the unabomber live - with reference to Theodore John Kaczynski, an American mathematician who for almost two decades was sending bomb letters - Spanish? "Pompeyo is a spartan person with routines", explain the researchers who followed the trail of letters, stamps and materials until they found him. He spent the afternoons working in his workshop that he had set up at home and where he prepared the threatening missives.
After retiring, his life was the workshop and the pages where he reported on the progress of the Russian invasion. It is clear that, according to the inquiries, he was not a consumer of traditional media, but of pro-Russian pages oriented more towards disinformation and fake news, with a favorable view of Russian actions in Ukraine.
From the confiscated material, they were able to determine that González defines himself as a "left-wing patriot", although without a clear political affiliation. With a past as a follower of communist ideas, he developed a "deep" pro-Russian and anti-NATO feeling, which led him to the conviction that the invasion of Russia was justified by the abuses of the Atlantic Alliance and its non-compliance with the alleged commitment with Russia not to expand eastward.
His hobbies were consuming pro-Russian propaganda and shopping on the internet for material. During the first months of the summer of 2022, the detainee bought through Amazon a kilo of pure potassium nitrate, wire with a wick, switches, copper filaments and incandescent bulbs. In October and November he bought stickers, hinges, all kinds of screws, precision drills and templates to draw the numbers and the alphabet - with which to write the addresses. The agents of the Information Commissioner who carried out the searches even found a manipulated drone, capable of transporting and unloading explosive material similar to that which had been introduced in the envelopes. He was arrested on January 25, just over two months after the first of the letters arrived in Moncloa.
Despite the secrecy shown since then in front of the agents, the hypothesis that gains more strength among the investigators is that the retiree wanted to send a message. And although the artifacts he prepared meticulously "have enough power to cause serious injuries" - and in certain circumstances even more than that - "it is difficult to think of an intention to attack", given the controls of security to which threatening letters are subjected: physical security, guards with scanners, protocols for receiving packages. However, the same sources continue, "they were explosives that traveled through the postal traffic and passed through many hands: the subject has assumed serious risks".
